The John James Newsletter No. <210>

The John James Newsletter 210

16 December 2017

Nuclear annihilation is ‘one impulsive tantrum away’

Beatrice Fihn

When the nobility see that they are unable to resist the people, they unite in exalting one of their number and creating him prince, so as to be able to carry out their own designs under the shadow of his authority

Nicolas Machiavelli

We did not quit basic treaties that are cornerstones of the global security, we did not exit from the ABM Treaty or START: The US did it, unilaterally

Vladimir Putin

Stocks look blatantly overvalued. Bonds look even more so. Art has never fetched such big prices. The bitcoin is only an absurd appendage to what is already a bubble in everything

Financial Times

Commercial ships carrying oil, consumables and equipment emit more C02 than the whole of the UK from all sources

UK World Fleet Register

Remove life and planet earth is just an inconsequential wet rock with a poisonous atmosphere revolving pointlessly around an ordinary star on the outer fringes of an undistinguished galaxy

William Rees

Some people with less than 5 hectares own 30% of the farmland but produce 70% of the food. The tragedy is that global demand for crops could double over a generation or two, but the land to grow them will not exist.

George Monbiot

Bitcoin is a potentially catastrophic energy guzzler

The recent upsurge in the price of Bitcoin seems to have finally awakened the world to the massively destructive environmental consequences of this bubble. the most widely used estimate of the energy required to “mine” Bitcoins is comparable to the electricity usage of Denmark, but this is probably an underestimate

The bitcoin mania forms part of a much broader development in the global financial system since the financial crisis of 2008-2009. One of the main factors in sustaining the bubble has been the promise of major corporate and income tax cuts for the for the ultra-wealthy

From 1960 the Alpine snow season has shortened by 38 days—starting an average of 12 days later and ending 26 days earlier. Europe experienced its warmest-ever winter in the 2015–16 season, with snow cover in the southern French Alps just 20% of its typical depth. Last December was the driest in 150 years of record keeping, and the flakes that did manage to fall didn’t stay around long. In the Dolomites, it takes 4,700 snow-blowers to keep trails covered.

Brexit; the crushing of democracy by billionaires; the next financial crash; a rogue US president: none of them keeps me awake at night. This is not because I don’t care – I care very much. It’s only because I have a bigger question on my mind. Where is our food going to come from?

UK to bring back beavers in first government flood reduction scheme of its kind

Beaver family will be released in the Forest of Dean to stop a village from flooding. The government may support other schemes to restore the beaver four centuries after it was driven to extinction in England and Wales.

In the private sector, 225 investors launched Climate Action 100+, a campaign to bring the world’s 100 biggest corporate climate polluters in line with the Paris goals. The announcement followed a day after Exxon Mobil bowed to shareholder pressure and agreed to publish analysis of how its oil and gas assets will fare in a 2C world.

The internet has made acquiring information near-instantaneous. If a hacker knows where to look for the databases, can break through digital security measures, and can make sense of the data, he or she can acquire years’ worth of intel in just a few minutes. The enemy state could start using the sensitive information before anyone realises that something’s amiss. That kind of efficiency makes James Bond look like a slob.

When the battle against ISIS will end, no American soldier will be tolerated in Syria or they will be considered as forces of occupation. Russia conveyed to the US that Iran will stay in Syria as long as President Assad decides.

The UN resolution which allowed other countries to fight ISIS within Syria and Iraq no longer applies. But the U.S. military, despite the lack of any legal basis, wants to continue its occupation of Syria’s north-east. The attempt to do so will fail. Its Kurdish allies in the area are already moving away from it and now prefer Russian protection. Guerrilla forces to fight the U.S. “presence” are being formed.

The entire Middle East, from Palestine to Yemen, appears set to burst into flames after this week. The region was already teetering on the edge, but recent events have only made things worse. And while the mayhem should be apparent to any casual observer, what’s less obvious is Jared Kushner’s role in the chaos.

Conflict has forced 1.7 million people to flee their homes in the Democratic Republic of Congo this year. It’s a mega-crisis. The scale of people fleeing violence is off the charts, outpacing Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

Gene Extinction Weapon Developed By US Military Can Wipe Out Specific Races

$100 million dollars has already been invested into the “gene drive” research in an attempt to “tweak” the ability to wipe out certain races based on their genetic makeup. If the threat of thermonuclear war with Russia wasn’t harrowing enough, another potentially apocalyptic technology is being weaponized to kill vast swathes of the human population.

Despite massive jumps in wind-generated electricity emissions from transport were at record levels. Carbon emissions are not going to drop until proper climate policy is in place. “If you don’t foster renewable energy, it’s only going to get worse,”

Women who have accused Trump of sexual harassment and assault came together in New York City on Monday to share “their firsthand accounts of President Trump groping, fondling, forcibly kissing, humiliating, and harassing women” and demand that Congress launch an investigation into their allegations.

What the study of whales and dolphins can reveal about the basis of human intelligence

The relationship between social structure and brain size is partly driven by increasing social-behavioural flexibility It is not merely group size, but the quality of social interactions that correlate with brain size. Culture, behavioral richness and cognition are intertwined and can create a positive feedback loop: larger brains can support a larger social repertoire and a larger repertoire can support a greater carrying capacity, potentially offering learners greater opportunity and variety for learning.

The most crucial stage of the brain’s growth comes during the first 1,000 days of a child’s life. Air pollution has been found to damage the blood-brain barrier, which can lead to conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease in later life. exposure to air pollution can be linked to weaker verbal and nonverbal IQ and memory, reduced test scores, and various other neurological behavioural issues.

The programs hardest hit by funding cuts are those designed to maintain biodiversity by protecting ecosystems and shrinking animal and plant populations with deeper cuts promised into next decade.While the federal budget has expanded by $36bn since Tony Abbott took office, funding for the environment has been cut by nearly half a billion dollars so far, an analysis by two conservation groups found.

There is not one climate scientist in the Australian Parliament. The world’s leading climate research organisations (NASA, NOAA, NSIDC, Berkeley Earth, Potsdam Climate Impacts, Hadley-Met, Tindale, CSIRO, BOM) have confirmed current trends toward a world of +2 degrees Celsius and +4 degrees Celsius above mean pre-industrial temperatures.

Burn-offs are a routine part of preparations for bushfire season, but modelling suggests fire authorities need to target 30% of land to have any meaningful effect on taming future wildfires. We need to introduce on the outskirts of towns and cities clever landscape designs that included irrigation and green fire breaks in the form of parklands, that could work in conjunction with burn-offs.

Average land use area needed to produce one unit of protein by food type, measured in metres squared per gram of protein over a crop’s annual cycle or the average animal’s lifetime. Values are based on a meta-analysis of studies across 742 agricultural systems and over 90 unique foods.